a Deluxe bookplated book has shown up on eBay now - looks to be from the family that was in front of you in line. Here is a quote from their auction: "only the first 8 people managed to get deluxe with book plate as they were put into books by staff at waterstones by mistake once in they could not remove so they had to sell like that so i was verry lucky"

Any feel for how many deluxe copies got bookplates from when you were there? The above quote feels mostly like hyperbole to get a higher eBay price to me.

This is the family that bought at least one copy each of both books and I think there were five of them.

Waterstone's may have made a 'mistake' in putting the bookplates in the Deluxe Version, and this would explain why there are no US Deluxe copies.

Waterstones had no books with the bookplates in, Waterstone's staff inserted them. If I take what they have said as being true, then they had not realised when I passed that they should not put bookplates in both books, so you are looking at a lot more than eight books.

So two possibilities.

1 - Waterstone's made a mistake, probably 20-30 Deluxe copies with bookplates exist.2 - They did not make a mistake, I still think they had about 200 bookplates in total and I would guess 1/3 went into the Deluxe books, about 65 books.

I am impressed with the latest copy on Ebay from the family in front of me in the queue at Waterstones, though disappointed that they did not ask for my autograph (they seem to have everybody else who was there)